FP RINGS™ · FLUENCY POINTS

Four rings.
Every dimension
of fluency.

Most apps collapse all of language into one number. Voicely measures four distinct competencies — each trainable, each CEFR-anchored, each cross-trained by HEXI™.

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R1 Pronunciation
R2 Comprehension
R3 Production
R4 Retention

THE METAPHOR

Language fitness is not a level. It's a practice.

01

A runner has no "running score."

They have VO2 max, pace, and endurance. Each trains differently. Language is the same.

02

Four competencies. Not one level.

Pronunciation, Comprehension, Production, and Retention are distinct cognitive skills. Training one doesn't develop the others.

03

Collapse is why you plateau.

Collapsing four skills into one score hides which dimension is the bottleneck. You can't train what you can't see.

THE FOUR RINGS

Each ring. Its own science.

74

Ring 1

Pronunciation

Phoneme accuracy scored against your dialect target. Not whether you sound foreign — which sounds, and exactly how far. Every utterance scored by Azure Speech at the phoneme level.

CEFR Anchoring

A2 threshold: 60 FP. B1: 72 FP. B2: 85 FP.

68

Ring 2

Comprehension

Active decoding of native speech at speed. Not translation — processing. Connected speech, reduced vowels, dialect prosody, lexical density.

CEFR Anchoring

A2 threshold: 55 FP. B1: 68 FP. B2: 82 FP.

52

Ring 3

Production

Spontaneous sentence construction under communicative pressure. Complexity, accuracy, and fluency tracked simultaneously — because they trade off against each other.

CEFR Anchoring

A2 threshold: 48 FP. B1: 65 FP. B2: 78 FP.

81

Ring 4

Retention

Long-term consolidation of vocabulary and grammar patterns. Your personal forgetting curve, measured per item — not a generic spaced repetition schedule.

CEFR Anchoring

A2 threshold: 58 FP. B1: 72 FP. B2: 86 FP.

FLUENCY POINTS™

Points that mean something.

Every XP system in every language app is arbitrary — a number that goes up when you show up. Fluency Points™ map directly to real-world conversational milestones.

XP

Goes up when you open the app. Doesn't measure fluency.

Generic levels (B1, B2)

Collapse four skills into one label. Tell you where you are, not why.

Fluency Points™

Ring-specific, CEFR-anchored, cross-trained by HEXI™. Goes up when you actually improve.

HOW FP ARE EARNED

Ring 1Pronunciation

Azure Speech phoneme score × ring weight × session difficulty multiplier

Ring 2Comprehension

Recall accuracy × response latency × dialect complexity

Ring 3Production

Complexity + Accuracy + Fluency composite (Skehan CAF framework)

Ring 4Retention

Recall rate × days since last review × forgetting curve coefficient

THE COMPOUND

HEXI never lets your weakest ring go unaddressed.

Every session, HEXI calculates the gap between your rings and routes training to close it. No manual planning. No blind spots.

HEXI — Session plan

Ring 3 is 19 FP behind Ring 2. Today's session opens with Compose™ — two structured output tasks targeting the verb conjugation pattern that slipped in yesterday's Scenario. Comprehension data from Intake™ is cross-loaded: the vocabulary gap HEXI found in Ring 2 reappears as a production target in Ring 3.

Ring 1Ring 2

Phonemes you can't hear, you can't produce. Comprehension gaps become pronunciation targets.

Ring 2Ring 3

Production failures surface comprehension gaps. What you can't say reveals what you don't hear.

Ring 3Ring 4

Retained vocabulary becomes production material. Anchor™ data feeds Compose™ targets.

Ring 4Ring 1

Pronunciation clarity aids memory encoding. Words you say correctly are remembered longer.

CEFR ANCHORING

Every ring maps to the standard.

FP thresholds are calibrated against the CEFR Companion Volume (2020). Reaching a level means all four rings meet their threshold simultaneously — not a module completed.

LevelR1 PronunciationR2 ComprehensionR3 ProductionR4 Retention
A135 FP32 FP28 FP38 FP
A260 FP55 FP48 FP58 FP
B172 FP68 FP65 FP72 FP
B285 FP82 FP78 FP86 FP
C193 FP91 FP88 FP94 FP

RESEARCH BASIS

The science behind the rings.

DeKeyser (2007)

Skill Acquisition Theory

Fluency comes from proceduralization — thousands of practice reps in context. FP tracks that, not knowledge accumulation.

Nation (2001)

Vocabulary Knowledge

Receptive and productive vocabulary develop at different rates. That's why Ring 2 and Ring 3 score separately.

Anderson ACT-R (1983)

Cognitive Skill Acquisition

Skill acquisition follows a power law. FP Rings surface plateau-breaking interventions at exactly the right moment.

See your rings.

Take the quiz and get your FP baseline across all four rings in under 3 minutes.

Take the quiz →